Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Now that another month has come and gone, let's take a look at the books I read last month.

1. Heartless, by Gail Carriger
2. The Jewel and Her Lapidary, by Fran Wilde
3. Lions, by Bonnie Nadzam
4. The Maze Runner, by James Dashner
5. Girls of Fire, by Robin Wasserman
6. The Wolf Road, by Beth Lewis
7. The Vegetarian, by Han Kang
8. The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold
9. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin
10. Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett
11. A Thousand Words for Stranger, by Julie Czerneda
12. Infomocracy, by Malka Older
13. Spiderlight, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
14. Signs Preceding the End of the World, by Yuri Herrera

Best Book of the Month: One of my most anticipated novels of the year was Malka Older's Infomocracy and I am happy to report that it did not disappoint. I don't think it was quite was I expected, not that I'm at all sure what I did expect, but I couldn't stop thinking about Infomocracy any time I had to put the book down. It's also interesting reading the book during the closing days of this election cycle in the United States, but Older's look at how information and elections are traded at manipulated at both a global and a micro scale is friggin fascinating and intense. More, please.

Disappointment of the Month: Having heard such good things about Fran Wilde's Updraft, I was looking forward to reading this novella of hers - and somehow, I didn't care. I don't know that there was anything particularly wrong with it, but somehow it didn't grab me. I've noticed that other people who loved Updraft didn't connect with the Jewel and her Lapidary, so I'll still give Updraft a shot one day. It's just farther down my to-read list now.

Discovery of the Month: I've somehow never read Adrian Tchaivosky before despite having a few of his novels (Shadows of the Apt) on my bookshelf for years as review copies. Tor.com Publishing's release of Spiderlight was a more bite sized opportunity to jump into a standalone and - it's compelling with a cast of really distasteful characters, the heroes I mean. It's very Tolkien-esque / standard epic fantasy feeling as the core of the novel, with heroes of the Light questing out to serve a prophecy and defeat the Dark Lord - except the heroes are collectively all assholes and not in the charming asshole sort of way. They're pretty shitty people. Despite that, Thchaivoksy's storytelling is compelling.

Worth Noting: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry was a complete charmer. My wife read it, immediately handed it to me and I read the first chapter. I didn't want to put the book down. I'm not sure what, specifically, I loved about it so much that I could put into words, but it was a friggin delightful book.

Gender Breakdown: 11 of the 14 books I read in October were written by women, which is likely my strongest month of the year. This brings my total to 75 out of 137 and increases the percentage to 54.74%. With two months left in the year, I feel good about ending the year with at least half the books I've read being written by women.